Watching the World’s Game, in the World’s City

Clockwise from top left: Players at Macombs Dam Park in the Bronx; Champions League fans at Lunasa, in the East Village; the back room at Caffé Romeo, in Bensonhurst; at Miss Favela, beneath the Williamsburg Bridge.Credit
Clockwise from top left: Uli Seit and Emon Hassan for The New York Times; Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times; Michael Nagle for The New York Times

On a gloriously sunny afternoon recently, Lunasa, an East Village pub, was packed seven deep at the bar, as three TVs showed the day’s big games. Soccer games, that is, in Germany, Portugal and England.

Just wait until the World Cup starts on June 12.

Outside Brazil, there is no better place to experience the world’s sport than the world’s city. Passion for soccer runs deep in New York, among Ghana fans in the Bronx, who expect yet another victory over the United States team; among the Japanese faithful in a discreet Kips Bay lounge; and bursting from 900 Bosnians around Astoria preparing for their nation’s first “Svjetski Kup.” There are 32 teams, in eight groups; we have chosen one nation from each group and provided a local prism to view the games through.

Looking out the windows of Miss Favela, past the yellow and green walls and the shabby-chic metal chairs and tables, you have a view of the underside of the Williamsburg Bridge.

For a moment, it is possible to forget that you are in the new Brooklyn, and to be transported to a grittier era, before Bedford Avenue became a byword for urban cool. Or even farther afield, perhaps to an outpost in an industrial corner of São Paulo.

As the host of this year’s World Cup, the soccer-mad nation of Brazil has spent billions of dollars preparing for fans from the 31 other nations competing in the tournament. But just as many New Yorkers, along with more than a million people from around the world, will flock to South America for the cup, tens of thousands of Brazilians will find themselves in the city.

Indeed, over the past decade, the number of visitors to the United States with a Brazilian passport has mushroomed, growing to 1.5 million in 2011 from 385,000 in 2004, according to the Commerce Department.

In 2013 alone, nearly 900,000 Brazilians visited New York City, according to NYC & Company, the city’s official tourism agency.

When the tournament gets underway, an entire section of Midtown along 46th Street, known as Little Brazil, will become a cheering section whenever the team plays. A giant television will be erected outdoors to show the games, and countless fans, invariably wearing the yellow jersey of their homeland’s team, are expected to dance and party in the street.

We thought we would also suggest a spot for those looking for a more intimate affair: Miss Favela.

Its position beneath the bridge, with the unceasing roar of traffic overhead, ensures that there will be no noise complaints in the event of victory or defeat.

The owners are planning to set up extra televisions on match days, including one outside.

Gonzo Prado, 35, a bartender, said that if Brazil wins, you can expect the party to go on well after the end of play. But if Mr. Prado is not working, he has other plans. He is from Uruguay, and his compatriots will be getting together at another Brooklyn restaurant, Tabaré, where the fans will be wearing sky blue and pulling for Los Charrúas.

Miss Favela57 South Fifth Street, Brooklyn; (718) 230-4040.

Ghanaians who have settled in the Bronx — there are more than 16,000, according to the city — find themselves with a World Cup conundrum in the opening match, when Ghana meets the United States. Root for their beloved Black Stars? Or for the country that they now call home?

Ghana has knocked the United States out of the last two World Cups. For some in the Bronx, there is no debate. “We are going to beat them again, no matter what,” said Kwame Bonsu, the manager of Papaye Restaurant off East 183rd Street, a popular Ghanaian spot, which will broadcast the game on June 16. “It’s a done deal. Because we are better than them.”

Sam Ansah, a Ghanaian-American accountant who organizes regular weekend pickup games, plans to stop by Papaye but will mostly watch the World Cup at home with a group of Ghanaian friends. “We yell, we shout, we give our opinions, even if the coach doesn’t hear,” he said.

At 42, Mr. Ansah is both a player and an organizer of the games that begin at dawn on Saturdays and Sundays at the Macombs Dam Park turf field, across from Yankee Stadium. For three hours, about 50 men crowd the sideline to play, some of them former college players or former stars from Ghana in their 30s and 40s. It’s a popular pitch in the summer, with youth games that follow.

Some of the Ghanaian players said they planned to gather at Dred, a barbershop off East 174th Street, to watch the game while getting a haircut (a dangerous proposition). For others, the outcome of the opening match is a win-win.

“Those of us who are citizens, we are on the borderline,” Mr. Ansah said, adding that the United States team’s past could represent a psychological hindrance. “They are overdetermined,” Mr. Ansah said.

Papaye Restaurant2300 Grand Concourse, Bronx; (718) 676-0771.

A New Yorker without a natural kinship for any of the 32 nations playing in the tournament, if such a New Yorker exists, could make a plausible argument for kinship with the Dutch. After all, they were the original gentrifiers.

Traces of their dominion are still all around, and not just in what was originally New Amsterdam, at the southern tip of Manhattan. Shortly after they arrived in the New World, the Dutch began to migrate across the East River, and in 1646 they formed Breuckelen.

From Boerum Hill, named after the family of prominent early Dutch settlers, to Cobble Hill, the literal translation of the Dutch “Ponkiesbergh,” many Dutch names have survived. The Dutch-born population, not so much.

Joost Burgers, 32, an assistant professor of English at Queensborough Community College, has a word of warning for any prospective fan of the Netherlands.

Be prepared for disappointment.

The team has made the finals three times, including in the last World Cup, but has never won the title.

“There’s a whole subgenre of Dutch soccer literature dedicated to why the Oranje are the eternal silver, that draws on history, politics and culture to show that we don’t have a ‘winning mentality,’” he said.

Mr. Burgers said that German bars, like Zum Schneider on the Lower East Side, are popular places for Dutch fans to go — if the Germans are not playing. And there is Tonic, a three-story sports bar in Times Square that has been the de facto headquarters for the Netherlands during World Cups past.

He fears, however, that watching in a bar just might be too anxiety-provoking.

If, by chance, the Dutch play a match in the group stage with nothing on the line, he said, he may go to the appropriately named Amsterdam Ale House, one of the more venerable drinking institutions on the Upper West Side.

It is a popular destination for soccer fans during both the World Cup and other major European championships. With its tin ceiling and Tiffany-like windows, the pub, which opened as such in the 1930s, retains the feel of an old-world saloon.

And if Mr. Burgers is correct about his team’s chances, he will need a stiff drink.

Amsterdam Ale House 340 Amsterdam Avenue, Manhattan; (212) 362-7260.

The T-shirts are being printed, the paraphernalia is being flown in from Japan, and a special blue cocktail is being conceived to toast the team known as the Samurai Blue.

For three nights or more, Maou Suzuki will transform the karaoke bar he manages, Japas 27, on Third Avenue between East 26th and 27th Streets, into a den for the soccer-crazed.

Normally, it is the sushi served via conveyor belt on the ground floor, and the karaoke on the floor above, that draw the crowds to the restaurant. With its worn red banquettes and low-slung bar, the main room has seen its share of 1980s power ballads belted out with gusto.

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At Cevabdzinica Sarajevo, on 34th Avenue in Astoria.Credit
Michael Nagle for The New York Times

But during games, Mr. Suzuki said, expect a hushed atmosphere of anticipation, with the occasional outburst.

The official gathering spot for Japanese fans is generally a restaurant in Times Square called Sake Bar Hagi, but Mr. Suzuki’s bar is likely to be more intimate and intense. “The crowd here really likes to watch the game,” he said.

Most will probably be transplants, he said, Japanese viewers who now call New York home.

The city and Japan have a long history together. More than 150 years ago, The New York Times reported in detail on a visiting delegation from the Empire of the Sun. Some 500,000 New Yorkers lined Broadway to cheer the visitors from the distant land. Walt Whitman even commemorated the moment in a poem for the newspaper, called “The Errand-Bearers.”

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The relationship has endured, and last year more than 330,000 tourists from Japan made their way to New York.

Mr. Suzuki, 34, who was born in Tokyo, said he would not describe himself as a soccer fanatic, but like many others, he gets the fever every four years.

And there are still remnants of the party last time around, including a bottle clad in a blue team jersey, having waited four years for its team to take the field again.

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Amsterdam Ale House, on the Upper West Side.Credit
Brian Harkin for The New York Times

Japas 27366 Third Avenue, Manhattan; (212) 889-2329.

There is no shortage of Italian neighborhoods in New York, even if each one clings to the vestiges of its 19th- and early-20th-century heyday, from Arthur Avenue in the Bronx to Manhattan’s original Little Italy. In these enclaves, Italians, Italian-Americans and Italophiles alike will doubtless cheer Andrea Pirlo, the team’s ageless “architect”; sigh in disgust at Italy’s maddeningly slow starts; and roar when (if?) the Azzurri, the men in blue, come to life.

To love Italian soccer is to suffer passionately. To follow the Azzurri is to be superstitious.

Witness Brooklyn. The Sistine Chapel has a particularly famous ceiling, but Bensonhurst has one of its own.

In the back room of Caffé Romeo on 20th Avenue, where a projection screen shows soccer live from Italy, the ceiling is stained brown, with Champagne, beer and nostalgia. The stains have been there since Italy won the World Cup in 2006, as the cafe’s owner, Giovanni Badalamenti tells it. He insists he will not disturb them, at least until after this World Cup.

This old haunt, set in its ways amid a changing neighborhood, might not be as hospitable as Grotta Azzurra in Lower Manhattan. There, 95 percent of the customers are tourists, said David Molnar, the manager, who likens Little Italy to “Times Square II.”

“As long as we have the whole world,” he added, “we are happy.”

As it did during the last World Cup, Grotta Azzurra will show games on four televisions and from a couple of projectors. Italy’s challenging draw in Group D starts against an old rival: England. Already Mr. Molnar, 40, originally from Budapest, said he had gotten emails from loyal British customers saying they were coming specifically for that match. “We take the British people,” he said.

Caffé Romeo7111 20th Avenue, Brooklyn; (718) 232-3131.

Grotta Azzurra177 Mulberry Street, Manhattan; (212) 925-8775.

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El Pequeño Coffee Shop, on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens.Credit
Michael Nagle for The New York Times

Televisions on Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights are perpetually tuned to Latin American soccer — some screens face right out the window and onto the street — so, ostensibly, you could go from store to restaurant to bar to nightclub without missing a free kick during this World Cup. At the Ecuador Notaria office, on the second floor of a building off 80th Street, you could even get a divorce notarized while cheering for La Tri, as the national team of Ecuador is known. (Definitely not to be confused with El Tri, Mexico’s team.) Next door, at Variedades, you could pick up your Ecuadorean team jersey and a horned hat before heading over to 86th Street to El Pequeño Coffee Shop for the full experience.

El Pequeño, a sprawling diner, juice bar and Ecuadorean steak cafe, will broadcast every World Cup game on its five flat-screen televisions. The restaurant will be wired with surround sound. There will be a special tapas menu, featuring Ecuadorean specialties: skirt steak, chucos (shish kebabs) with fries and tripa mishqui (grilled and marinated tripe).

Juan Carlos Segarra, 27, the manager and son of the owner, said he and his family came to New York from Ecuador when he was 7. “Here there are a lot of first-generation Americans,” Mr. Segarra said. Soccer “connects the generations because it’s such a rich game with so much culture,” he said, adding: “You see the parents bring out the kids. It’s a bonding experience.”

Ecuador is making only its third appearance in the World Cup. Antonio Valencia, a winger for Manchester United, is considered the team’s top player. Francisco Moya, the local assemblyman, whose family is from Ecuador, has a signed Valencia jersey in his Queens office. He will have a screen set up in William F. Moore Park nearby in Corona for showing the semifinals and finals of the cup. The practice, common in South America and in Europe, brings the community together, from generation to generation.

El Pequeño Coffee Shop86-10 Roosevelt Avenue, Queens; (718) 205-7128.

Ifeta Huskovic, like most men and women from Bosnia and Herzegovina, can name her favorite soccer players from the last 50 years. Her husband, Ismet, treasures his FK Sarajevo team picture from 1984, and before the World Cup begins, he will hang it on the wall in the cafe they own, for good luck. These soccer-crazed restaurateurs in Astoria, once refugees from the war in Sarajevo, have traveled to Bosnia and back to support their team in its first World Cup appearance.

Mr. Huskovic, 65, recently returned from a visit to Sarajevo, having bought as many souvenirs as he could to hang in their cozy corner spot, Cevabdzinica Sarajevo, on 34th Avenue in Astoria. Ms. Huskovic ordered a new TV for the back wall.

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Kebeer Draft Bar & Grill, at the corner of Brighton Beach and Coney Island Avenues in Brooklyn.Credit
Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

“We are going to have a big party,” Ms. Huskovic, 60, said.

She is preparing a meat patty (pljeskavica) named after Edin Dzeko, the 6-foot-4 striker nicknamed the Bosnian Diamond, who survived the war as a teenager and plays for Manchester City. There will be cevapi, the homemade sausages that Mr. Huskovic rolls himself, with the fresh bread they bake with ingredients imported from Bosnia.

The intimate restaurant does not have an alcohol license, but Bosnian orange soda will be flowing when Bosnia and Herzegovina takes the field. With a panoramic photograph of Sarajevo on the wall below the television, the spot has become a hangout for the city’s largest concentration of Bosnians, numbering almost 900, but is welcoming to all curious customers. A knowledge of soccer helps.

“Bosnian people, they always have time to talk about sports,” Ms. Huskovic said. “They are very poor, but they have big, big soul and hearts for sports.”

“They talk how they are going to be proud,” she said, her husband nodding. “If Edin Dzeko give goal in Brazil, I know all streets in Brazil will be loud.”

From his restaurant at the corner of Brighton Beach and Coney Island Avenues, Max Aranbayev, the owner of Kebeer Draft Bar & Grill, has seen the tension from the conflict in Ukraine spill into Little Odessa. And he won’t stand for it.

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At Japas 27, on Third Avenue in Manhattan.Credit
Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Once, he said, his Ukrainian customers and Russian customers were drinking buddies. Now they often argue across the bar about Russia’s annexation of Crimea. A month ago, Mr. Aranbayev recalled, there were guys from Ukraine driving by the corner with their nation’s flags.

“It’s like brother turning against brother right now,” he said. “I told them, listen, guys, this is not the type of bar that you can fight. The way I establish this place, this is friendly place.”

It will be happy hour when Russia begins group play on June 17 against South Korea, and Mr. Aranbayev, 44, will make sure the American craft beer is flowing alongside the German drafts, as chasers to vodka. Here, you can order mozzarella sticks and pickled herring for appetizers, and be tempted, if that’s the right word, by the bar snacks of dried salted fish. As the culinary borders blend, Mr. Aranbayev figures, so should the geographical ones.

“To me, Russia is one big country, not like they are trying to divide this and that,” said Mr. Aranbayev, who came to the United States at 16 from what is now Uzbekistan. Since then, he has worked as a cobbler, worked as a butcher, sold knishes and grilled shish kebabs, and since 2009 has operated his sports bar/beer hall/Eastern European grill (a combination of “kebab” and “beer”).

Just as Brighton Beach is far more diverse than it was when he arrived — “you have people from Ukraine, from Belarus, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Republic of Georgia” — he predicts an enthusiastic local following for the Russian team, whose members all play within the country.

Mr. Aranbayev is confident his customers will put sport first. “I tell them, ‘Listen, come on, this is just politics,’” he said. “‘End of the day, we’re all from the same region.’”